Section 2: Judicial Power and Jurisdiction
Clause 1. Cases and Controversies; Grants of Jurisdiction Clause 1. The Judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;-to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;-to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction; to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;-to Controversies between two or more States; between a State and Citizens of another State; between Citizens of different States,- between Citizens of the same State claiming Land under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects. Judicial Power and Jurisdiction-cases and Controversies Late in the Convention, a delegate proposed to extend the judicial power to cases arising under the Constitution of the United States as well as under its laws and treaties. Madison's notes continue: "Mr. Madison doubted whether it was not going too far to extend the jurisdiction of the Court generally to cases arising under the Constitution, and whether it ought not to be limited to cases of a Judiciary Nature. The right of expounding the Constitution in cases not of this nature ought not to be given to that Department." "The motion of Docr. Johnson was agreed to nem : con : it being generally supposed that the jurisdiction given was constructively limited to cases of a Judiciary nature-".
That the Framers did not intend for federal judges to roam at large in construing the Constitution and laws of the United States but rather preferred and provided for resolution of disputes arising in a "judicial" manner is revealed not only in the language of § 2 and the passage quoted above but also in the refusal to associate the judges in the extra-judicial functions which some members of the Convention-Madison and Wilson notably- conceived for them. Thus, proposals for associating the judges in a council of revision to pass on laws generally were voted down four times, and similar fates befell suggestions that the Chief Justice be a member of a privy council to assist the President, and that the President or either House of Congress be able to request advisory opinions of the Supreme Court. This intent of the Framers was early effectuated when the Justices declined a request of President Washington to tender him advice respecting legal issues growing out of United States neutrality between England and France in 1793. Moreover, the refusal of the Justices to participate in the congressional plan for awarding veterans' pensions bespoke a similar adherence to the restricted role of courts. These restrictions have been encapsulated in a series of principles or doctrines, the application of which determines whether an issue is meet for judicial resolution and whether the parties raising it are entitled to have it judicially resolved. Constitutional restrictions are intertwined with prudential considerations in the expression of these principles and doctrines, and it is seldom easy to separate out the two strands.
The Two Classes of Cases and Controversies
By the terms of the foregoing section, the judicial power extends to nine classes of cases and controversies, which fall into two general groups. In the words of Chief Justice Marshall in Cohens v. Virginia: "In the first, jurisdiction depends on the character of the cause, whoever may be the parties. This class comprehends 'all cases in law and equity arising under this constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority.' This cause extends the jurisdiction of the Court to all the cases described, without making in its terms any exception whatever, and without any regard to the condition of the party. If there be any exception, it is to be implied, against the express words of the article. In the second class, the jurisdiction depends entirely on the character of the parties. In this are comprehended controversies between two or more States, 'between a State and citizens of another State,' and 'between a State and foreign States, citizens or subjects.' If these be the parties, it is entirely unimportant, what may be the subject of controversy. Be it what it may, these parties have a constitutional right to come into the courts of the Union."
Judicial power is "the power of a court to decide and pronounce a judgment and carry it into effect between persons and parties who bring a case before it for decision." The meaning attached to the terms "cases" and "controversies" determines therefore the extent of the judicial power as well as the capacity of the federal courts to receive jurisdiction. According to Chief Justice Marshall, judicial power is capable of acting only when the subject is submitted in a case and a case arises only when a party asserts his rights "in a form prescribed by law." "By cases and controversies are intended the claims of litigants brought before the courts for determination by such regular proceedings as are established by law or custom for the protection or enforcement of rights, or the prevention, redress, or punishment of wrongs. Whenever the claim of a party under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States takes such a form that the judicial power is capable of acting upon it, then it has become a case. The term implies the existence of present or possible adverse parties whose contentions are submitted to the Court for adjudication."
Chief Justice Hughes once essayed a definition, which, however, presents a substantial problem of labels. "A 'controversy' in this sense must be one that is appropriate for judicial determination. A justiciable controversy is thus distinguished from a difference or dispute of a hypothetical character; from one that is academic or moot. The controversy must be definite and concrete, touching the legal relations of parties having adverse legal interests. It must be a real and substantial controversy admitting of specific relief through a decree of a conclusive character, as distinguished from an opinion advising what the law would be upon a hypothetical state of facts." Of the "case" and "controversy" requirement, Chief Justice Warren admitted that "those two words have an iceberg quality, containing beneath their surface simplicity submerged complexities which go to the very heart of our constitutional form of government. Embodied in the words 'cases' and 'controversies' are two complementary but somewhat different limitations. In part those words limit the business of federal courts to questions presented in an adversary context and in a form historically viewed as capable of resolution through the judicial process. And in part those words define the role assigned to the judiciary in a tripartite allocation of power to assure that the federal courts will not intrude into areas committed to the other branches of government. Justiciability is the term of art employed to give expression to this dual limitation placed upon federal courts by the case and controversy doctrine." Justice Frankfurter perhaps best captured the flavor of the "case" and "controversy" requirement by noting that it takes the "expert feel of lawyers" often to note it.
From these quotations may be isolated several factors which, in one degree or another, go to make up a "case" and "controversy."
The presence of adverse litigants with real interests to contend for is a standard which has been stressed in numerous cases, and the requirement implicates a number of complementary factors making up a justiciable suit. The requirement was a decisive factor, if not the decisive one, in Muskrat v. United States, in which the Court struck down a statute authorizing certain named Indians to bring a test suit against the United States to determine the validity of a law affecting the allocation of Indian lands. Attorney's fees of both sides were to be paid out of tribal funds deposited in the United States Treasury. "The judicial power," said the Court, ". . . is the right to determine actual controversies arising between adverse litigants, duly instituted in courts of proper jurisdiction.... It is true the United States is made a defendant to this action, but it has no interest adverse to the claimants. The object is not to assert a property right as against the government, or to demand compensation for alleged wrongs because of action upon its part. The whole purpose of the law is to determine the constitutional validity of this class of legislation, in a suit not arising between parties concerning a property right necessarily involved in the decision in question, but in a proceeding against the government in its sovereign capacity, and concerning which the only judgment required is to settle the doubtful character of the legislation in question."
Collusive and Feigned Suits.-Adverse litigants are lacking in those suits in which two parties have gotten together to bring a friendly suit to settle a question of interest to them.
Thus, in Lord v. Veazie, the latter had executed a deed to the former warranting that he had certain rights claimed by a third person, and suit was instituted to decide the "dispute." Declaring that "the whole proceeding was in contempt of the court, and highly reprehensible," the Court observed: "The contract set out in the pleadings was made for the purpose of instituting this suit.... The plaintiff and defendant are attempting to procure the opinion of this court upon a question of law, in the decision of which they have a common interest opposed to that of other persons, who are not parties to the suit.... And their conduct is the more objectionable, because they have brought up the question upon a statement of facts agreed upon between themselves . . . and upon a judgment pro forma entered by their mutual consent, without any actual judicial decision...." "Whenever," said the Court in another case, "in pursuance of an honest and actual antagonistic assertion of rights by one individual against another, there is presented a question involving the validity of any act of any legislature, State or federal, and the decision necessarily rests on the competency of the legislature to so enact, the court must . . . determine whether the act be constitutional or not; but such an exercise of power is the ultimate and supreme function of courts. It is legitimate only in the last resort, and as a necessity in the determination of real, earnest and vital controversy between individuals. It never was the thought that, by means of a friendly suit, a party beaten in the legislature could transfer to the courts an inquiry as to the constitutionality of the legislative act." Yet several widely known constitutional decisions have been rendered in cases in which friendly parties contrived to have the actions brought and in which the suits were supervised and financed by one side. And there are instances in which there may not be in fact an adverse party at certain stages, that is, some instances when the parties do not actually disagree, but in which the Court and the lower courts are empowered to adjudicate.
Stockholder Suits.-Moreover, adversity in parties has often been found in suits by stockholders against their corporation in which the constitutionality of a statute or a government action is drawn in question, even though one may suspect that the interests of plaintiffs and defendant are not all that dissimilar. Thus, in Pol-lock v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Co., the Court sustained the jurisdiction of a district court which had enjoined the company from paying an income tax even though the suit was brought by a stockholder against the company, thereby circumventing a statute which forbade the maintenance in any court of a suit to restrain the collection of any tax. Subsequently, the Court sustained jurisdiction in cases brought by a stockholder to restrain a company from investing its funds in farm loan bonds issued by federal land banks and by preferred stockholders against a utility company and the TVA to enjoin the performance of contracts between the company and TVA on the ground that the statute creating it was unconstitutional. Perhaps most notorious was Carter v. Carter Coal Co., in which the president of the company brought suit against the company and its officials, among whom was Carter's father, a vice president of the company, and in which the Court entertained the suit and decided the case on the merits.
Substantial Interest: Standing
Perhaps the most important element of the requirement of adverse parties may be found in the "complexities and vagaries" of the standing doctrine. "The fundamental aspect of standing is that it focuses on the party seeking to get his complaint before a federal court and not on the issues he wishes to have adjudicated." The "gist of the question of standing" is whether the party seeking relief has "alleged such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy as to assure that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the court so largely depends for illumination of difficult constitutional questions." This practical conception of standing has now given way to a primary emphasis upon separation of powers as the guide. "[T]he 'case or controversy' requirement defines with respect to the Judicial Branch the idea of separation of powers on which the Federal Government is founded. The several doctrines that have grown up to elaborate that requirement are 'founded in concern about the proper-and properly limited -role of the courts in a democratic society."'
Standing as a doctrine is composed of both constitutional and prudential restraints on the power of the federal courts to render decisions, and is almost exclusively concerned with such public law questions as determinations of constitutionality and review of administrative or other governmental action. As such, it is often interpreted according to the prevailing philosophies of judicial activism and restraint and narrowly or broadly in terms of the viewed desirability of access to the courts by persons seeking to challenge legislation or other governmental action. The trend in the 1960s was to broaden access; in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, it was to narrow access by stiffening the requirements of standing, although Court majorities were not entirely consistent. The major difficulty in setting forth the standards is that the Court's generalizations and the results it achieves are often at variance.
The standing rules apply to actions brought in federal courts, and they have no direct application to actions brought in state courts.
Citizen Suits.-Persons do not have standing to sue to enforce a constitutional provision when all they can show or claim is that they have an interest or have suffered an injury that is shared by all members of the public. Thus, a group of persons suing as citizens to litigate a contention that membership of Members of Congress in the military reserves constituted a violation of Article I,§ 6, cl. 2, was denied standing. "The only interest all citizens share in the claim advanced by respondents is one which presents injury in the abstract.... [The] claimed nonobservance [of the clause], standing alone, would adversely affect only the generalized interest of all citizens in constitutional governance."
Taxpayer Suits.-Save for a narrow exception, standing is also lacking when a litigant attempts to sue to contest governmental action that he claims injures him as a taxpayer. In Frothingham v. Mellon, the Court denied standing to a taxpayer suing to restrain disbursements of federal money to those States that chose to participate in a program to reduce maternal and infant mortality; her claim was that Congress lacked power to appropriate funds for those purposes and that the appropriations would increase her taxes in future years in an unconstitutional manner. Noting that a federal taxpayer's "interest in the moneys of the Treasury . . . is comparatively minute and indeterminate" and that "the effect upon future taxation, of any payment out of the funds ... [is] remote, fluctuating and uncertain," the Court ruled that plaintiff had failed to allege the type of "direct injury" necessary to confer standing.
Taxpayers were found to have standing, however, in Flast v. Cohen, to contest the expenditure of federal moneys to assist religious-affiliated organizations. The Court asserted that the answer to the question whether taxpayers have standing depends on whether the circumstances of each case demonstrate that there is a logical nexus between the status asserted and the claim sought to be adjudicated. First, there must be a logical link between the status of taxpayer and the type of legislative enactment attacked; this means a taxpayer must allege the unconstitutionality only of exercises of congressional power under the taxing and spending clause of Article I, § 8, rather than also of incidental expenditure of funds in the administration of an essentially regulatory statute. Second, there must be a logical nexus between the status of taxpayer and the precise nature of the constitutional infringement alleged; this means the taxpayer must allege the challenged enactment exceeds specific constitutional limitations imposed upon the exercise of the taxing and spending power, rather than simply arguing that the enactment is generally beyond the powers delegated to Congress. Both Frothingham and Flast met the first test, because they attacked a spending program. Flast met the second test, because the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment operates as a specific limitation upon the exercise of the taxing and spending power, while Frothingham had alleged only that the Tenth Amendment had been exceeded. Reserved was the question whether other specific limitations constrained the taxing and spending clause in the same manner as the Establishment Clause.
Since Flast, the Court has refused to expand taxpayer standing. Litigants seeking standing as taxpayers to challenge legislation permitting the CIA to withhold from the public detailed information about its expenditures as a violation of Article I, § 9, cl. 7, and to challenge certain Members of Congress from holding commissions in the reserves as a violation of Article I, § 6, cl. 2, were denied standing, in the former cases because their challenge was not to an exercise of the taxing and spending power and in the latter because their challenge was not to legislation enacted under Article I, § 8, but rather was to executive action in permitting Members to maintain their reserve status. An organization promoting church-state separation was denied standing to challenge an executive decision to donate surplus federal property to a church-related college, both because the contest was to executive action under valid legislation and because the property transfer was not pursuant to a taxing and spending clause exercise but was taken under the property clause of Article IV, § 3, cl. 2. It seems evident that for at least the foreseeable future taxpayer standing will be restricted to Establishment Clause limitations on spending programs.
Local taxpayers attacking local expenditures have generally been permitted more leeway than federal taxpayers insofar as standing is concerned. Thus, in Everson v. Board of Education, such a taxpayer was found to have standing to challenge the use of public funds for transportation of pupils to parochial schools. But in Doremus v. Board of Education, the Court refused an appeal from a state court for lack of standing of a taxpayer challenging Bible reading in the classroom. No measurable disbursement of public funds was involved in this type of activity, so that there was no direct injury to the taxpayer, a rationale similar to the spending program-regulatory program distinction of Flast.
Constitutional Standards: Injury in Fact, Causation, and Redressability.-While the Court has been inconsistent, it has now settled upon the rule that, "at an irreducible minimum," the constitutional requisites under Article III for the existence of standing are that the plaintiff must personally have suffered some actual or threatened injury that can fairly be traced to the challenged action of the defendant, and that the injury is likely to be redressed by a favorable decision.
For some time, injury alone was not sufficient; rather, the injury had to be "a wrong which directly results in the violation of a legal right," that is, "one of property, one arising out of contract, one protected against tortious invasion, or one founded in a statute which confers a privilege." The problem was that the "legal right" language was "demonstrably circular: if the plaintiff is given standing to assert his claims, his interest is legally protected; if he is denied standing, his interest is not legally protected." The observable tendency of the Court, however, was to find standing frequently in cases distinctly not grounded in property rights.
In any event, the "legal rights" language has now been dispensed with. Rejection occurred in two administrative law cases in which the Court announced that parties had standing when they suffered "injury in fact" to some interest, "economic or otherwise," that is arguably within the zone of interest to be protected or regulated by the statute or constitutional provision in question. Now political, environmental, aesthetic, and social interests, when impaired, afford a basis for making constitutional attacks upon governmental action. The breadth of the injury in fact concept may be discerned in a series of cases involving the right of private parties to bring actions under the Fair Housing Act to challenge alleged discriminatory practices. The subjective and intangible interests of persons in enjoying the benefits of living in integrated communities were found sufficient to permit them to attack actions which threatened or harmed those interests even though the actions were not directed at them. In FEC v. Akins, the Court found "injury-in-fact" present when plaintiff voters alleged that the Federal Election Commission had denied them information, to which they alleged an entitlement, respecting an organization that might or might not be a political action committee. Congress had afforded persons access to the Commission and had authorized "any person aggrieved" by the actions of the FEC to sue to challenge the action. That the injury was widely shared did not make the claimed injury a "generalized grievance," the Court held, but rather in this case, as in others, it was a concrete harm to each member of the class. The case is a principal example of the ability of Congress to confer standing and to remove prudential constraints on judicial review. Similarly, the interests of individuals and associations of individuals in using the environment afforded them the standing to challenge actions which threatened those environmental conditions. Even citizens who bring qui tam actions under the False Claims Act, an action that entitles them to a percentage of any civil penalty assessed for violation, have been held to have standing, on the theory that the Government has assigned a portion of its damages claim to the plaintiff, and the asignee of a claim has standing to assert the injury in fact suffered by the assignor. Nonetheless, the Court has also in constitutional cases been wary of granting standing to persons who alleged threats or harm to interests which they shared with the larger community of people at large, a rule against airing "generalized grievances" through the courts, although it is unclear whether this rule (or subrule) has a constitutional or a prudential basis. And in a number of cases, the Court has refused standing apparently in the belief that the assertion of harm is too speculative or too remote to credit.
Of increasing importance are the second and third elements of standing, causation and redressability, recently developed and held to be of constitutional requisite. There must be a causal connection between the injury and the conduct complained of; that is, the Court insists that the plaintiff show that "but for" the action, she would not have been injured. And the Court has insisted that there must be a "substantial likelihood" that the relief sought from the court if granted would remedy the harm. Thus, poor people who had been denied service at certain hospitals were held to lack standing to challenge IRS policy of extending tax benefits to hospitals that did not serve indigents, since they could not show that alteration of the tax policy would cause the hospitals to alter their policies and treat them. Low-income persons seeking the invalidation of a town's restrictive zoning ordinance were held to lack standing, because they had failed to allege with sufficient particularity that the complained-of injury, inability to obtain adequate housing within their means, was fairly attributable to the ordinance instead of to other factors, so that voiding of the ordinance might not have any effect upon their ability to find affordable housing. Similarly, the link between fully integrated public schools and allegedly lax administration of tax policy permitting benefits to discriminatory private schools was deemed too tenuous, the harm flowing from private actors not before the courts and the speculative possibility that directing denial of benefits would result in any minority child being admitted to a school. But the Court did permit plaintiffs to attack the constitutionality of a law limiting the liability of private utilities in the event of nuclear accidents and providing for indemnification, on a showing that "but for" the passage of the law there was a "substantial likelihood," based upon industry testimony and other material in the legislative history, that the nuclear power plants would not be constructed and that therefore the environmental and aesthetic harm alleged by plaintiffs would not occur; thus, a voiding of the law would likely relieve the plaintiffs of the complained of injuries. Operation of these requirements makes difficult but not impossible the establishment of standing by persons indirectly injured by governmental action, that is, action taken as to third parties that is alleged to have as a consequence injured the claimants.
In a case permitting a plaintiff contractors' association to challenge an affirmative-action, set-aside program, the Court seemed to depart from several restrictive standing decisions in which it had held that the claims of attempted litigants were too "speculative" or too "contingent." The association had sued, alleging that many of its members "regularly bid on and perform construction work" for the city and that they would have bid on the set- aside contracts but for the restrictions. The Court found the association had standing, because certain prior cases under the equal protection clause established a relevant proposition. "When the government erects a barrier that makes it more difficult for members of one group to obtain a benefit than it is for members of another group, a member of the former group seeking to challenge the barrier need not allege that he would have obtained the benefit but for the barrier in order to establish standing. The 'injury in fact' in an equal protection case of this variety is the denial of equal treatment resulting from the imposition of the barrier, not the ultimate inability to obtain the benefit." The association, therefore, established standing by alleging that its members were able and ready to bid on contracts but that a discriminatory policy prevented them from doing so on an equal basis.
Redressability can be present in an environmental citizen suit even when the remedy is civil penalties payable to the government. The civil penalties, the Court explained, "carried with them a deterrent effect that made it likely, as opposed to merely speculative, that the penalties would redress [plaintiffs'] injuries by abating current violations and preventing future ones."
Prudential Standing Rules.-Even when Article III constitutional standing rules have been satisfied, the Court has held that principles of prudence may counsel the judiciary to refuse to adjudicate some claims. It is clear that the Court feels free to disregard any of these prudential rules in cases in which it thinks exceptionable circumstances exist, and Congress is free to legislate away prudential restraints and confer standing to the extent permitted by Article III. The Court has identified three rules as prudential ones, only one of which has been a significant factor in the jurisprudence of standing. The first two rules are that the plaintiff's interest, to which she asserts an injury, must come within the "zone of interest" arguably protected by the constitutional provision or statute in question and that plaintiffs may not air "generalized grievances" shared by all or a large class of citizens. The important rule concerns the ability of a plaintiff to represent the constitutional rights of third parties not before the court.
Standing to Assert the Constitutional Rights of Others.- Usually, one may assert only one's interest in the litigation and not challenge the constitutionality of a statute or a governmental action because it infringes the protectable rights of someone else. In Tileston v. Ullman, an early round in the attack on a state anticontraceptive law, a doctor sued, charging that he was prevented from giving his patients needed birth control advice. The Court held he had no standing; no right of his was infringed, and he could not represent the interests of his patients. But there are several exceptions to this part of the standing doctrine that make generalization misleading. Many cases allow standing to third parties if they demonstrate a requisite degree of injury to themselves and if under the circumstances the injured parties whom they seek to represent would likely not be able to assert their rights. Thus, in Barrows v. Jackson, a white defendant who was being sued for damages for breach of a restrictive covenant directed against African Americans-and therefore able to show injury in liability for damages-was held to have standing to assert the rights of the class of persons whose constitutional rights were infringed. Similarly, the Court has permitted defendants who have been convicted under state law-giving them the requisite injury-to assert the rights of those persons not before the Court whose rights would be adversely affected through enforcement of the law in question. In fact, the Court has permitted persons who would be subject to future prosecution or future legal action-thus satisfying the injury requirement-to represent the rights of third parties with whom the challenged law has interfered with a relationship. It is also possible, of course, that one's own rights can be affected by action directed at someone from another group. A substantial dispute was occasioned in Singleton v. Wulff, over the standing of doctors who were denied Medicaid funds for the performance of abortions not "medically indicated" to assert the rights of absent women to compensated abortions. All the Justices thought the Court should be hesitant to resolve a controversy on the basis of the rights of third parties, but they divided with respect to the standards exceptions. Four Justices favored a lenient standard, permitting third party representation when there is a close, perhaps confidential, relationship between the litigant and the third parties and when there is some genuine obstacle to third party assertion of their rights; four Justices would have permitted a litigant to assert the rights of third parties only when government directly interdicted the relationship between the litigant and the third parties through the criminal process and when litigation by the third parties is in all practicable terms impossible.
Following Wulff, the Court emphasized the close attorney-client relationship in holding that a lawyer had standing to assert his client's Sixth Amendment right to counsel in challenging application of a drug-forfeiture law to deprive the client of the means of paying counsel. However, a "next friend" whose stake in the outcome is only speculative must establish that the real party in interest is unable to litigate his own cause because of mental incapacity, lack of access to courts, or other disability.
A variant of the general rule is that one may not assert the unconstitutionality of a statute in other respects when the statute is constitutional as to him. Again, the exceptions may be more important than the rule. Thus, an overly broad statute, especially one that regulates speech and press, may be considered on its face rather than as applied, and a defendant to whom the statute constitutionally applies may thereby be enabled to assert its unconstitutionality.
Organizational Standing.-Organizations do not have standing as such to represent their particular concept of the public interest, but organizations have been permitted to assert the rights of their members. In Hunt v. Washington State Apple Advertising Comm'n, the Court promulgated elaborate standards, holding that an organization or association "has standing to bring suit on behalf of its members when: (a) its members would otherwise have standing to sue in their own right; (b) the interests it seeks to protect are germane to the organization's purpose; and (c) neither the claim asserted, nor the relief requested, requires the participation of individual members in the lawsuit." Similar considerations arise in the context of class actions, in which the Court holds that a named representative with a justiciable claim for relief is necessary when the action is filed and when the class is certified, but that following class certification there need be only a live controversy with the class, provided the adequacy of the representation is sufficient.
Standing of States to Represent Their Citizens.-The right of a State to sue as parens patriae, in behalf of its citizens, has long been recognized. No State, however, may be parens patriae of her citizens "as against the Federal Government." But a State may sue to protect its citizens from environmental harm, and to enjoin other States and private parties from engaging in actions harmful to the economic or other well being of it citizens. The State must be more than a nominal party without a real interest of its own, merely representing the interests of particular citizens who cannot represent themselves; it must articulate an interest apart from those of private parties that partakes of a "quasi- sovereign interest" in the health and well-being, both physical and economic, of its residents in general, although there are suggestions that the restrictive definition grows out of the Court's wish to constrain its original jurisdiction and may not fit such suits brought in the lower federal courts.
Standing of Members of Congress.-The lower federal courts, principally the District of Columbia Circuit, developed a body of law with respect to the standing of Members of Congress, as Members, to bring court actions, usually to challenge actions of the executive branch. When the Supreme Court finally addressed the issue on the merits in 1997, however, it severely curtailed Member standing. All agree that a legislator "receives no special consideration in the standing inquiry," and that he, along with every other person attempting to invoke the aid of a federal court, must show "injury in fact" as a predicate to standing. What that injury in fact may consist of, however, is the basis of the controversy.
A suit by Members for an injunction against continued prosecution of the Indochina war was held maintainable on the theory that if the court found the President's actions to be beyond his constitutional authority, the holding would have a distinct and significant bearing upon the Members' duties to vote appropriations and other supportive legislation and to consider impeachment. The breadth of this rationale was disapproved in subsequent cases. The leading decision is Kennedy v. Sampson, in which a Member was held to have standing to contest the alleged improper use of a pocket veto to prevent from becoming law a bill the Senator had voted for. Thus, Congressmen were held to have a derivative rather than direct interest in protecting their votes, which was sufficient for standing purposes, when some "legislative disenfranchisement" occurred. In a comprehensive assessment of its position, the Circuit distinguished between (1) a diminution in congressional influence resulting from executive action that nullifies a specific congressional vote or opportunity to vote in an objectively verifiable manner, which will constitute injury in fact, and (2) a diminution in a legislator's effectiveness, subjectively judged by him, resulting from executive action, such a failing to obey a statute, where the plaintiff legislator has power to act through the legislative process, in which injury in fact does not exist. Having thus established a fairly broad concept of Member standing, the Circuit then proceeded to curtail it by holding that the equitable discretion of the court to deny relief should be exercised in many cases in which a Member had standing but in which issues of separation of powers, political questions, and other justiciability considerations counseled restraint. The status of this issue thus remains in confusion.
Member or legislator standing has been severely curtailed, although not quite abolished, in Raines v. Byrd. Several Members of Congress, who had voted against passage of the Line Item Veto Act, sued in their official capacities as Members of Congress to invalidate the law, alleging standing based on the theory that the statute adversely affected their constitutionally prescribed law-making power. Emphasizing its use of standing doctrine to maintain separation-of-powers principles, the Court adhered to its holdings that, in order to possess the requisite standing, a person must establish that he has a "personal stake" in the dispute and that the alleged injury suffered is particularized as to him. Neither requirement, the Court held, was met by these legislators. First, the Members did not suffer a particularized loss that distinguished them from their colleagues or from Congress as an entity. Second, the Members did not claim that they had been deprived of anything to which they were personally entitled. "[A]ppellees' claim of standing is based on loss of political power, not loss of any private right, which would make the injury more concrete.... If one of the Members were to retire tomorrow, he would no longer have a claim; the claim would be possessed by his successor instead. The claimed injury thus runs (in a sense) with the Member's seat, a seat which the Member holds . . . as trustee for his constituents, not as a prerogative of personal power."
See also Reuss v. Balles, 584 F.2d 461 (D.C. Cir.), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 997 (1978).
So, there is no such thing as Member standing? Not necessarily so, because the Court turned immediately to preserving (at least a truncated version of) Coleman v. Miller, inwhich the Court had found that 20 of the 40 members of a state legislature had standing to sue to challenge the loss of the effectiveness of their votes as a result of a tie-breaker by the lieutenant governor. Although there are several possible explanations for the result in that case, the Court in Raines chose to fasten on a particularly narrow point. "[O]ur holding in Coleman stands (at most, . . . ) for the proposition that legislators whose votes would have been sufficient to defeat (or enact) a specific legislative Act have standing to sue if that legislative action goes into effect (or does not go into effect), on the ground that their votes have been completely nullified." Because these Members could still pass or reject appropriations bills, vote to repeal the Act, or exempt any appropriations bill from presidential cancellation, the Act did not nullify their votes and thus give them standing.
It will not pass notice that the Court's two holdings do not cohere. If legislators have standing only to allege personal injuries suffered in their personal capacities, how can they have standing to assert official-capacity injury in being totally deprived of the effectiveness of their votes? A period of dispute in the D. C. Circuit seems certain to follow.
Standing to Challenge Lawfulness of Governmental Action.-Standing to sue on statutory or other non-constitutional grounds has a constitutional content to the degree that Article III requires a "case" or "controversy," necessitating a litigant who has sustained or will sustain an injury so that he will be moved to present the issue "in an adversary context and in a form historically viewed as capable of judicial resolution." Liberalization of the law of standing in this field has been notable. The "old law" required that in order to sue to contest the lawfulness of agency administrative action, one must have suffered a "legal wrong," that is, "the right invaded must be a legal right," requiring some resolution of the merits preliminarily. An injury-in-fact was insufficient.
In 1970, however, the Court promulgated a two-pronged standing test: if the litigant (1) has suffered injury-in-fact and if he (2) shows that the interest he seeks to protect is arguably within the zone of interests to be protected or regulated by the statutory guarantee in question, he has standing. Of even greater importance was the expansion of the nature of the cognizable injury beyond economic injury, to encompass "aesthetic, conservational, and recreational" interests as well. "Aesthetic and environmental well-being, like economic well-being, are important ingredients of the quality of life in our society, and the fact that particular environmental interests are shared by the many rather than the few does not make them less deserving of legal protection through the judicial process." Thus, plaintiffs who pleaded that they used the natural resources of the Washington area, that rail freight rates would deter the recycling of used goods, and that their use of natural resources would be disturbed by the adverse environmental impact caused by the nonuse of recyclable goods, had standing as "persons aggrieved" to challenge the rates set. Neither the large numbers of persons allegedly injured nor the indirect and less perceptible harm to the environment was justification to deny standing. The Court granted that the plaintiffs might never be able to establish the "attenuated line of causation" from rate setting to injury, but that was a matter for proof at trial, not for resolution on the pleadings.
The Court held that a plaintiff did not have to show it was the congressional purpose to protect its interests. It is sufficient if the interest asserted is "arguably within the zone of interests to be protected . . . by the statute." Id. at 492 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). But the Court divided 5-to- 4 in applying the test. And see Bennett v. Spear, 520 U.S. 154 (1997).
Much debate has occurred in recent years with respect to the validity of "citizen suit" provisions in the environmental laws, especially in light of the Court's retrenchment in constitutional standing cases. The Court in insisting on injury in fact as well as causation and redressability has curbed access to citizen suits, but that Congress may expansively confer substantial degrees of standing through statutory creations of interests remains true.
The Requirement of a Real Interest
Almost inseparable from the requirements of adverse parties and substantial enough interests to confer standing is the requirement that a real issue be presented, as contrasted with speculative, abstract, hypothetical, or moot issues. It has long been the Court's "considered practice not to decide abstract, hypothetical or contingent questions." A party cannot maintain a suit "for a mere declaration in the air." In Texas v. ICC, the State attempted to enjoin the enforcement of the Transportation Act of 1920 on the ground that it invaded the reserved rights of the State. The Court dismissed the complaint as presenting no case or controversy, declaring: "It is only where rights, in themselves appropriate subjects of judicial cognizance, are being, or about to be, affected prejudicially by the application or enforcement of a statute that its validity may be called in question by a suitor and determined by an exertion of the judicial power." And in Ashwander v. TVA, the Court refused to decide any issue save that of the validity of the contracts between the Authority and the Company. "The pronouncements, policies and program of the Tennessee Valley Authority and its directors, their motives and desires, did not give rise to a justiciable controversy save as they had fruition in action of a definite and concrete character constituting an actual or threatened interference with the rights of the person complaining."
Concepts of real interest and abstract questions appeared prominently in United Public Workers v. Mitchell, an omnibus attack on the constitutionality of the Hatch Act prohibitions on political activities by governmental employees. With one exception, none of the plaintiffs had violated the Act, though they stated they desired to engage in forbidden political actions. The Court found no justiciable controversy except in regard to the one, calling for "concrete legal issues, presented in actual cases, not abstractions", and seeing the suit as really an attack on the political expediency of the Act.
Advisory Opinions.-In 1793, the Court unanimously refused to grant the request of President Washington and Secretary of State Jefferson to construe the treaties and laws of the United States pertaining to questions of international law arising out of the wars of the French Revolution. Noting the constitutional separation of powers and functions in his reply, Chief Justice Jay said: "These being in certain respects checks upon each other, and our being Judges of a Court in the last resort, are considerations which afford strong arguments against the propriety of our extra-judicially deciding the questions alluded to, especially as the power given by the Constitution to the President, of calling on the heads of departments for opinions, seem to have been purposely as well as expressly united to the Executive departments." Although the Court has generally adhered to its refusal, Justice Jackson was not quite correct when he termed the policy a "firm and unvarying practice...." The Justices in response to a letter calling for suggestions on improvements in the operation of the courts drafted a letter suggesting that circuit duty for the Justices was unconstitutional, but they apparently never sent it; Justice Johnson communicated to President Monroe, apparently with the knowledge and approval of the other Justices, the views of the Justices on the constitutionality of internal improvements legislation; and Chief Justice Hughes in a letter to Senator Wheeler on President Roosevelt's Court Plan questioned the constitutionality of a proposal to increase the membership and have the Court sit in divisions. Other Justices have individually served as advisers and confidants of Presidents in one degree or another. CORRESPONDENCE AND PUBLIC PAPERS OF JOHN JAY 486-489 (H. Johnston ed., 1893).
Nonetheless, the Court has generally adhered to the early precedent and would no doubt have developed the rule in any event, as a logical application of the case and controversy doctrine. As stated by Justice Jackson, when the Court refused to review an order of the Civil Aeronautics Board, which in effect was a mere recommendation to the President for his final action: "To revise or review an administrative decision which has only the force of a recommendation to the President would be to render an advisory opinion in its most obnoxious form-advice that the President has not asked, tendered at the demand of a private litigant, on a subject concededly within the President's exclusive, ultimate control. This Court early and wisely determined that it would not give advisory opinions even when asked by the Chief Executive. It has also been the firm and unvarying practice of Constitutional Courts to render no judgments not binding and conclusive on the parties and none that are subject to later review or alteration by administrative action." The early refusal of the Court to render advisory opinions has discouraged direct requests for advice so that the advisory opinion has appeared only collaterally in cases where there was a lack of adverse parties, or where the judgment of the Court was subject to later review or action by the executive or legislative branches of Government, or where the issues involved were abstract or contingent.
Declaratory Judgments.-Rigid emphasis upon such elements of judicial power as finality of judgment and award of execution coupled with equally rigid emphasis upon adverse parties and real interests as essential elements of a case and controversy created serious doubts about the validity of any federal declaratory judgment procedure. These doubts were largely dispelled by Court decisions in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and Congress quickly responded with the Federal Declaratory Judgment Act of 1934. Quickly tested, the Act was unanimously sustained. "The principle involved in this form of procedure," the House Report said, "is to confer upon the courts the power to exercise in some instances preventive relief; a function now performed rather clumsily by our equitable proceedings and inadequately by the law courts." Said the Senate Report: "The declaratory judgment differs in no essential respect from any other judgment except that it is not followed by a decree for damages, injunction, specific performance, or other immediately coercive decree. It declares conclusively and finally the rights of parties in litigations over a contested issue, a form of relief which often suffices to settle controversies and fully administer justice."
The 1934 Act provided that "[i]n cases of actual controversy" federal courts could "declare rights and other legal relations of any interested party petitioning for such declaration, whether or not further relief is or could be prayed...." Upholding the Act, the Court said:
"The Declaratory Judgment Act of 1934, in its limitation to 'cases of actual controversy,' manifestly has regard to the constitutional provision and is operative only in respect to controversies which are such in the constitutional sense. The word 'actual' is one of emphasis rather than of definition. Thus the operation of the Declaratory Judgment Act is procedural only. In providing remedies and defining procedure in relation to cases and controversies in the constitutional sense the Congress is acting within its delegated power over the jurisdiction of the federal courts which the Congress is authorized to establish." Finding that the issue in the case presented a definite and concrete controversy, the Court held that a declaration should have been issued.
It has insistently been maintained by the Court that "the requirements for a justiciable case or controversy are no less strict in a declaratory judgment proceeding than in any other type of suit." As Justice Douglas has written: "The difference between an abstract question and a 'controversy' contemplated by the Declaratory Judgment Act is necessarily one of degree, and it would be difficult, if it would be possible, to fashion a precise test for determining in every case whether there is such a controversy. Basically, the question in each case is whether the facts alleged, under all the circumstances, show that there is a substantial controversy, between parties having adverse legal interests, of sufficient immediacy and reality to warrant the issuance of a declaratory judgment." It remains, therefore, for the courts to determine in each case the degree of controversy necessary to establish a case for purposes of jurisdiction. Even then, however, the Court is under no compulsion to exercise its jurisdiction. Utilization of declaratory judgments to settle disputes and identify rights in many private areas, like insurance and patents in particular but extending into all areas of civil litigation, except taxes, is common. The Court has, however, at various times demonstrated a substantial reluctance to have important questions of public law, especially regarding the validity of legislation, resolved by such a procedure. In part, this has been accomplished by a strict insistence upon concreteness, ripeness, and the like. Nonetheless, even at such times, several noteworthy constitutional decisions were rendered in declaratory judgment actions.
As part of the 1960s hospitality to greater access to courts, the Court exhibited a greater receptivity to declaratory judgments in constitutional litigation, especially cases involving civil liberties issues. The doctrinal underpinnings of this hospitality were sketched out by Justice Brennan in his opinion for the Court in Zwickler v. Koota, in which the relevance to declaratory judgments of the Dombrowski v. Pfister line of cases involving federal injunctive relief against the enforcement of state criminal statutes was in issue. First, it was held that the vesting of "federal question" jurisdiction in the federal courts by Congress following the Civil War, as well as the enactment of more specific civil rights jurisdictional statutes, "imposed the duty upon all levels of the federal judiciary to give due respect to a suitor's choice of a federal forum for the hearing and decision of his federal constitutional claims." Escape from that duty might be found only in "narrow circumstances," such as an appropriate application of the abstention doctrine, which was not proper where a statute affecting civil liberties was so broad as to reach protected activities as well as unprotected activities. Second, the judicially-developed doctrine that a litigant must show "special circumstances" to justify the issuance of a federal injunction against the enforcement of state criminal laws is not applicable to requests for federal declaratory relief: "a federal district court has the duty to decide the appropriateness and the merits of the declaratory request irrespective of its conclusion as to the propriety of the issuance of the injunction." This language was qualified subsequently, so that declaratory and injunctive relief were equated in cases in which a criminal prosecution is pending in state court at the time the federal action is filed or is begun in state court after the filing of the federal action but before any proceedings of substance have taken place in federal court, and federal courts were instructed not to issue declaratory judgments in the absence of the factors permitting issuance of injunctions under the same circumstances. But in the absence of a pending state action or the subsequent and timely filing of one, a request for a declaratory judgment that a statute or ordinance is unconstitutional does not have to meet the stricter requirements justifying the issuance of an injunction.
Ripeness.-Just as standing historically has concerned who may bring an action in federal court, the ripeness doctrine concerns when it may be brought. Formerly, it was a wholly constitutional principle requiring a determination that the events bearing on the substantive issue have happened or are sufficiently certain to occur so as to make adjudication necessary and so as to assure that the issues are sufficiently defined to permit intelligent resolution; the focus was on the harm to the rights claimed rather than on the harm to the plaintiff that gave him standing to bring the action, although, to be sure, in most cases the harm is the same. But in liberalizing the doctrine of ripeness in recent years the Court subdivided it into constitutional and prudential parts and conflated standing and ripeness considerations.
The early cases generally required potential plaintiffs to expose themselves to possibly irreparable injury in order to invoke federal judicial review. Thus, in United Public Workers v. Mitchell, government employees alleged that they wished to engage in various political activities and that they were deterred from their desires by the Hatch Act prohibitions on political activities. As to all but one plaintiff, who had himself actually engaged in forbidden activity, the Court held itself unable to adjudicate because the plaintiffs were not threatened with "actual interference" with their interests. The Justices viewed the threat to plaintiffs' rights as hypothetical and refused to speculate about the kinds of political activity they might engage in or the Government's response to it. "No threat of interference by the Commission with rights of these appellants appears beyond that implied by the existence of the law and the regulations." Similarly, resident aliens planning to work in the Territory of Alaska for the summer and then return to the United States were denied a request for an interpretation of the immigration laws that they would not be treated on their return as excludable aliens entering the United States for the first time, or alternatively, for a ruling that the laws so interpreted would be unconstitutional. The resident aliens had not left the country and attempted to return, although other alien workers had gone and been denied reentry, and the immigration authorities were on record as intending to enforce the laws as they construed them. Of course, the Court was not entirely consistent in applying the doctrine.
It remains good general law that pre-enforcement challenges to criminal and regulatory legislation will often be unripe for judicial consideration because of uncertainty of enforcement, because the plaintiffs can allege only a subjective feeling of inhibition or fear arising from the legislation or from enforcement of it, or because the courts need before them the details of a concrete factual situation arising from enforcement in order to engage in a reasoned balancing of individual rights and governmental interests. But one who challenges a statute or possible administrative action need demonstrate only a realistic danger of sustaining an injury to his rights as a result of the statute's operation and enforcement and need not await the consummation of the threatened injury in order to obtain preventive relief, such as exposing himself to actual arrest or prosecution. When one alleges an intention to engage in conduct arguably affected with a constitutional interest but proscribed by statute and there exists a credible threat of prosecution thereunder, he may bring an action for declaratory or injunctive relief. Similarly, the reasonable certainty of the occurrence of the perceived threat to a constitutional interest is sufficient to afford a basis for bringing a challenge, provided the court has sufficient facts before it to enable it to intelligently adjudicate the issues. of more concrete infringements upon their desires and intentions than the UPW plaintiffs had.
Mootness.-It may be that a case presenting all the attributes necessary for federal court litigation will at some point lose some attribute of justiciability, will, in other words, become "moot." The usual rule is that an actual controversy must exist at all stages of trial and appellate consideration and not simply at the date the action is initiated. "Under Article III of the Constitution, federal courts may adjudicate only actual, ongoing cases or controversies.... Article III denies federal courts the power 'to decide questions that cannot affect the rights of litigants in the case before them,' . . . and confines them to resolving 'real and substantial controvers[ies] admitting of specific relief through a decree of a conclusive character, as distinguished from an opinion advising what the law would be upon a hypothetical state of facts.' This case-or-controversy requirement subsists through all stages of federal judicial proceedings, trial and appellate. To sustain our jurisdiction in the present case, it is not enough that a dispute was very much alive when suit was filed, or when review was obtained in the Court of Appeals.... The parties must continue to have a 'personal stake in the outcome' of the lawsuit." Since, with the advent of declaratory judgments, it is open to the federal courts to "declare the rights and other legal relations" of the parties with res judicata effect, the question in cases alleged to be moot now seems largely if not exclusively to be decided in terms of whether an actual controversy continues to exist between the parties rather than some additional older concepts.
Cases may become moot because of a change in the law, or in the status of the parties, or because of some act of one of the parties which dissolves the controversy. But the Court has developed several exceptions, which operate to prevent many of the cases in which mootness is alleged from being in law moot. Thus, in criminal cases, although the sentence of the convicted appellant has been served, the case "is moot only if it is shown that there is no possibility that any collateral legal consequences will be imposed on the basis of the challenged conviction." The "mere possibility" of such a consequence, even a "remote" one, is enough to find that one who has served his sentence has retained the requisite personal stake giving his case "an adversary cast and making it justiciable." This exception has its counterpart in civil litigation in which a lower court judgment may still have certain present or future adverse effects on the challenging party.
A second exception, the "voluntary cessation" doctrine, focuses on whether challenged conduct which has lapsed or the utilization of a statute which has been superseded is likely to recur. Thus, cessation of the challenged activity by the voluntary choice of the person engaging in it, especially if he contends that he was properly engaging in it, will moot the case only if it can be said with assurance "that 'there is no reasonable expectation that the wrong will be repeated."' Otherwise, "[t]he defendant is free to return to his old ways" and this fact would be enough to prevent mootness because of the "public interest in having the legality of the practices settled."
Still a third exception concerns the ability to challenge short-term conduct which may recur in the future, which has been denominated as disputes "capable of repetition, yet evading review." Thus, in cases in which (1) the challenged action is too short in its duration to be fully litigated prior to its cessation or expiration, and (2) there is a reasonable expectation that the same complaining party would be subjected to the same action again, mootness will not be found when the complained-of conduct ends. The imposition of short sentences in criminal cases, the issuance of injunctions to expire in a brief period, and the short-term factual context of certain events, such as elections or pregnancies, are all instances in which this exception is frequently invoked.
An interesting and potentially significant liberalization of the law of mootness, perhaps as part of a continuing circumstances exception, is occurring in the context of class action litigation. It is now clearly established that, when the controversy becomes moot as to the plaintiff in a certified class action, it still remains alive for the class he represents so long as an adversary relationship sufficient to constitute a live controversy between the class members and the other party exists. The Court was closely divided, however, with respect to the right of the named party, when the substantive controversy became moot as to him, to appeal as error the denial of a motion to certify the class which he sought to represent and which he still sought to represent. The Court held that in the class action setting there are two aspects of the Article III mootness question, the existence of a live controversy and the existence of a personal stake in the outcome for the named class representative. Finding a live controversy, the Court determined that the named plaintiff retained a sufficient interest, "a personal stake," in his claimed right to represent the class in order to satisfy the "imperatives of a dispute capable of judicial resolution;" that is, his continuing interest adequately assures that "sharply presented issues" are placed before the court "in a concrete factual setting" with "self-interested parties vigorously advocating opposing positions."
Chief Justice Burger, the Court held that a class action was not mooted when defendant tendered to the named plaintiffs the full amount of recovery they had individually asked for and could hope to retain. Plaintiffs' interest in shifting part of the share of costs of litigation to those who would share in its benefits if the class were certified was deemed to be a sufficient "personal stake", although the value of this interest was at best speculative.
The immediate effect of the decision is that litigation in which class actions are properly certified or in which they should have been certified will rarely ever be mooted if the named plaintiff (or in effect his attorney) chooses to pursue the matter, even though the named plaintiff can no longer obtain any personal relief from the decision sought. Of much greater potential significance is the possible extension of the weakening of the "personal stake" requirement in other areas, such as the representation of third-party claims in non-class actions and the initiation of some litigation in the form of a "private attorneys general" pursuit of adjudication. It may be that the evolution in this area will be confined to the class action context, but cabining of a "flexible" doctrine of standing may be difficult.
Retroactivity Versus Prospectivity.-One of the distinguishing features of an advisory opinion is that it lays down a rule to be applied to future cases, much as does legislation generally. It should therefore follow that an Article III court could not decide purely prospective cases, cases which do not govern the rights and disabilities of the parties to the cases. The Court asserted that this principle is true, while applying it only to give retroactive effect to the parties to the immediate case. Yet, occasionally, the Court did not apply its holding to the parties before it, and in a series of cases beginning in the mid- 1960s it became embroiled in attempts to limit the retroactive effect of its-primarily but not exclusively -constitutional-criminal law decisions. The results have been confusing and unpredictable.
Prior to 1965, "both the common law and our own decisions recognized a general rule of retrospective effect for the constitutional decisions of this Court . . . subject to [certain] limited exceptions." Statutory and judge-made law have consequences, at least to the extent that people must rely on them in making decisions and shaping their conduct. Therefore, the Court was moved to recognize that there should be a reconciling of constitutional interests reflected in a new rule of law with reliance interests founded upon the old. In both criminal and civil cases, however, the Court's discretion to do so has been constrained by later decisions.
When in the 1960s the Court began its expansion of the Bill of Rights and applied the rulings to the States, a necessity arose to determine the application of the rulings to criminal defendants who had exhausted all direct appeals but could still resort to habeas corpus, to those who had been convicted but still were on direct appeal, and to those who had allegedly engaged in conduct but who had not gone to trial. At first, the Court drew the line at cases in which judgments of conviction were not yet final, so that all persons in those situations obtained retrospective use of decisions, but the Court then promulgated standards for a balancing process that resulted in different degrees of retroactivity in different cases. Generally, in cases in which the Court declared a rule which was "a clear break with the past," it denied retroactivity to all defendants, with the sometime exception of the appellant himself. With respect to certain cases in which a new rule was intended to overcome an impairment of the truth-finding function of a criminal trial or to cases in which the Court found that a constitutional doctrine barred the conviction or punishment of someone, full retroactivity, even to habeas claimants, was the rule. Justice Harlan strongly argued that the Court should sweep away its confusing balancing rules and hold that all defendants whose cases are still pending on direct appeal at the time of a law- changing decision should be entitled to invoke the new rule, but that no habeas claimant should be entitled to benefit.
The Court has now drawn a sharp distinction between criminal cases pending on direct review and cases pending on collateral review. For cases on direct review, "a new rule for the conduct of criminal prosecutions is to be applied retroactively to all cases, state or federal, pending on direct review or not yet final, with no exception for cases in which the new rule constitutes a 'clear break' with the past." Justice Harlan's habeas approach was then adopted by a plurality in Teague v. Lane and then by the Court in Penry v. Lynaugh. Thus, for collateral review in federal courts of state court criminal convictions, the general rule is that "new rules" of constitutional interpretation, those that break new ground or impose a new obligation on the States or the Federal Government, announced after a defendant's conviction has become final, will not be applied. For such habeas cases, a "new rule" is defined very broadly to include interpretations that are a logical outgrowth or application of an earlier rule unless the result was "dictated" by that precedent. The only exceptions are for decisions placing certain conduct or defendants beyond the reach of the criminal law, and for decisions recognizing a fundamental procedural right "without which the likelihood of an accurate conviction is seriously diminished."
What the rule is to be in civil cases, and indeed if there is to be a rule, has been disputed to a rough draw in recent cases. As was noted above, there is a line of civil cases, constitutional and nonconstitutional, in which the Court has declined to apply new rules, the result often of overruling older cases, retrospectively, sometimes even to the prevailing party in the case. As in criminal cases, the creation of new law, through overrulings or otherwise, may result in retroactivity in all instances, in pure prospectivity, or in partial prospectivity in which the prevailing party obtains the results of the new rule but no one else does. In two cases raising the question when States are required to refund taxes collected under a statute that is subsequently ruled to be unconstitutional, the Court revealed itself to be deeply divided. The question in Beam was whether the company could claim a tax re-fund under an earlier ruling holding unconstitutional the imposition of certain taxes upon its products. The holding of a fractionated Court was that it could seek a refund, because in the earlier ruling the Court had applied the holding to the contesting company, and once a new rule has been applied retroactively to the litigants in a civil case onsiderations of equality and stare decisis compel application to all. While partial or selective prospectivity is thus ruled out, neither pure retroactivity nor pure prospectivity is either required or forbidden.
Four Justices adhered to the principle that new law, new rules, as defined above, may be applied purely prospectively, without violating any tenet of Article III or any other constitutional value. Three Justices argued that all prospectivity, whether partial or total, violates Article III by expanding the jurisdiction of the federal courts beyond true cases and controversies. Apparently, the Court now has resolved this dispute, although the principal decision is a close five-to-four result. In Harper v. Virginia Dep't of Taxation, the Court adopted the principle of the Griffith decision in criminal cases and disregarded the Chevron Oil approach in civil cases. Henceforth, in civil cases, the rule is: "When this Court applies a rule of federal law to the parties before it, that rule is the controlling interpretation of federal law and must be given full retroactive effect in all cases open on direct review and as to all events, regardless of whether such events predate or postdate our announcement of the rule." Four Justices continued to adhere to Chevron Oil, however, so that with one Justice each retired from the different sides one may not regard the issue as definitively settled. Future cases must, therefore, be awaited for resolution of this issue.
It may be that the Court will refuse to adjudicate a case assuredly within its jurisdiction, presented by parties with standing in which adverseness and ripeness will exist, a case in other words presenting all the qualifications we have considered making it a justiciable controversy. The "label" for such a case is that it presents a "political question." Although the Court has referred to the political question doctrine as "one of the rules basic to the federal system and this Court's appropriate place within that structure," a commentator has remarked that "[i]t is, measured by any of the normal responsibilities of a phrase of definition, one of the least satisfactory terms known to the law. The origin, scope, and purpose of the concept have eluded all attempts at precise statements." That the concept of political questions may be "more amenable to description by infinite itemization than by generalization" is generally true, although the Court's development of rationale in Baker v. Carr has changed this fact radically. The doctrine may be approached in two ways, by itemization of the kinds of questions that have been labeled political and by isolation of the factors that have led to the labeling.
Origins and Development.-In Marbury v. Madison, Chief Justice Marshall stated: "The province of the court is, solely, to decide on the rights of individuals, not to inquire how the executive, or executive officers, perform duties in which they have a discretion. Questions in their nature political, or which are, by the constitution and laws, submitted to the executive can never be made in this court."
But the doctrine was asserted even earlier as the Court in Ware v. Hylton refused to pass on the question whether a treaty had been broken. And in Martin v. Mott, the Court held that the President acting under congressional authorization had exclusive and unreviewable power to determine when the militia should be called out. But it was in Luther v. Borden that the concept was first enunciated as a doctrine separate from considerations of interference with executive functions. This case presented the question of the claims of two competing factions to be the only lawful government of Rhode Island during a period of unrest in 1842. Chief Justice Taney began by saying that the answer was primarily a matter of state law that had been decided in favor of one faction by the state courts.
Insofar as the Federal Constitution had anything to say on the subject, the Chief Justice continued, that was embodied in the clause empowering the United States to guarantee to every State a republican form of government, and this clause committed determination of the issue to the political branches of the Federal Government. "Under this article of the Constitution it rests with Congress to decide what government is the established one in a State. For as the United States guarantee to each State a republican government, Congress must neccessarily decide what government is established in the State before it can determine whether it is republican or not. And when the senators and representatives of a State are admitted into the councils of the Union, the authority of the government under which they are appointed, as well as its republican character, is recognized by the proper constitutional authority. And its decision is binding on every other department of the government, and could not be questioned in a judicial tribunal." Here, the contest had not proceeded to a point where Congress had made a decision, "[y]et the right to decide is placed there, and not in the courts."
Moreover, in effectuating the provision in the same clause that the United States should protect them against domestic violence, Congress had vested discretion in the President to use troops to protect a state government upon the application of the legislature or the governor. Before he could act upon the application of a legislature or a governor, the President "must determine what body of men constitute the legislature, and who is the governor ... ." No court could review the President's exercise of discretion in this respect; no court could recognize as legitimate a group vying against the group recognized by the President as the lawful government. Although the President had not actually called out the militia in Rhode Island, he had pledged support to one of the competing governments, and this pledge of military assistance if it were needed had in fact led to the capitulation of the other faction, thus making an effectual and authoritative determination not reviewable by the Court.